The communication of data over communication networks often involves encoding and decoding the data. Many different coding schemes have been developed for use in encoding and decoding data. One conventional coding scheme is 8B/10B coding, which is defined in the IEEE 802.3 standard and is used in networks like ten-gigabit Ethernet networks. The 8B/10B coding scheme is used for physical coding sublayer (PCS) encoding and decoding of data.
In the 8B/10B coding scheme, 32 ten-gigabit media independent interface (XGMII) data bits and 4 XGMII control bits are encoded into and decoded from four 10-bit code groups. The encoding and decoding are typically performed using four parallel lanes, each lane associated with one 10-bit code group. Each lane is also typically associated with a separate physical medium attachment, meaning four physical medium attachments are routinely used in the 8B/10B coding scheme. A physical medium attachment typically supports access to a physical transmission medium, such as printed circuit board (PCB) tracks or lanes. The physical medium attachment may be responsible, for example, for serializaing and deserializing data between the physical transmission medium and the physical coding sublayer.